


The First Sorrowful Mystery

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Series: Prompt Responses [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Prayer, Prompt Fic, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:38:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://notworththetrouble12.tumblr.com/">notworththetrouble12</a>: "I would really like to see what you could do with what Dean prayed to Cas in Purgatory every night."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Sorrowful Mystery

The thing about praying is that it's so quiet on the other end. It makes him feel stupid with absolute immediacy.

Dean's had these moments in his lifetime, on earth where he was human and things sunk into him deep, where he'd look up at the sky and whiskey roiling in his gut would churn while his eyes burned and tears stung his nasal passages and he was just as likely to sneeze as to let his knees go down hard, weeping.

The sky never had any answers. No matter when you look at the sky-- to see there's clouds, to wonder about Heaven, to think about some planet Sam said rotates on its side. The sky is always the same. The sky is the ground is the highway is the motel ceiling is the shower curtain is the rack is your palms while you wait.

It doesn't even have the decency to move as fast as the most boring movie he can think of flickering across a screen.

And the clouds roll too slow, if there are any, and the stars are older than everything else. And nothing moves. Nothing ever answers.

Prayer before was like that and then Castiel started answering. Having someone answer where there were no words before was like discovering he could cook or something. Like hearing fucking Swedish and realizing he might never be able to pronounce it back, but he could understand every word said.

But while there was sudden comprehension there, that the phone call was going out and being received, the medium was still magic.

Dean never knew what to do with magic but stop it. Seek to silence the people who tried to use it.

It still felt unnatural, even the forty-third night. The ninetieth. The hundred and sixteenth.

Status reports were what he stuck to at first.

_Here's where I am. Here's how I did today. If you're looking for me, here's where to find me._

He added questions soon after.  _Here's where I am; where are you? Here's how I did today, here's how far I got, here's who I mowed through to get to this safe spot. Were you fighting today? Are you still around. If you're looking for me, here's where I am. Are you looking for me?_

That last one, those unanswered doubts. Those smacked of prayer from before. Like,  _oh god, why doesn't anybody help me? Why isn't anybody there?_

Dean hated that.

He retracted the questions.

If he had 'faith' enough -- whatever that meant -- to pray in the first place, he decided he was already trusting Cas to be on the other side of it, doing his part, trying to claw his way back to Dean.

All he could think was that someone held him, or that prayers didn't go through in this God-less place.

There was something between him and Cas, though, something close. Something that Dean knew probably gave Cas a good, if general, idea of where Dean was, even with his ribs marked up. They're closer, bound tighter; family. He was sure Cas could hear him but was being held in some way.

So he sliced through anything that wouldn't tell him the truth of it.

He got closer-- they got closer. Him and Benny, running through vamps and shifters and wraiths and even all manner of entirely extinct nasties.

They came to know that Cas was on the loose, or had broken free, whatever it was. He was running and he left his own trail of broken monsters and half-glimpses of an ash-and-tan trench.

When Dean first sat back after beheading the wraith who confirmed this, he fell to his haunches in the shade of a tree, Benny at his back, both of them keeping an eye out as they regained breath.

_Cas_ , he thought,  _Cas_ , he prayed.  _You're gonna be alright. You got away, you got through them. Good job. You know I'm on my way to you. I know you can't stay in one spot for too long but if you could slow down, if you could double back my way, if you could clear a whole area of goons, I can get closer to you. Stay put or something. Hide out._

Right. Yeah.

It occurred to him, well. A lot of weeks later. Before Benny even got to mumbling about it.

It occurred to him that Cas wasn't slowing down. That Cas was doing everything except getting found.

When he prayed then, he said what he was thinking.  _If this is some self-sacrifice bullshit, well then give it up and get your ass to me. Or you better hope you can't fucking hear me. You fucking--_

He waited until the next day to apologize, though he'd been thinking it all night. Regrets running so deep their litany against his skull might well have been an unintentional prayer.

Fuck a rosary, Dead did ten counts on why he was an idiot and one on "come find me," for every group of flesh eaters they ran into.

And then he stuck with the daily updates for a while.

When they would stop for a minute to breathe, to just stop, they didn't have to eat. Something about Purgatory itself suspended you in time. Removed the need for nourishment, silenced hunger (though not craving, if the vamps were anything to go by).

While he settled his fingers and cleared his mind, calmed his blood, he didn't sit and think of Sam or Ben or Lisa or Cas or Bobby or Mom or Dad or happily ever afters. He thought only of where they were headed next. He thought only of Cas in terms of where this mess might take him. He thought only of Sam in an understanding that, on the other side somewhere, Sam was trying to slam through, drag him back. If Sam got him out before he found Cas, if he dragged Dean through the portal before Benny managed to haul him over to it, Dean would only be pissed.

What he wouldn't give for a working GPS and a set of cuffs. He'd give both his hands to the cause and keep his blade in his teeth if that was what it took to keep Cas with him, to drag him out.

He once asked Cas to pray back.  _So I can hear you, I gotta hear you, man, we've gotta do strategy for a minute here, Cas, just a minute. Cas._

Like,  _call me back_ ; like fucking phone tag. Fuck.

He knew as he was doing it that there was no way. His brain was too tiny or he was just the wrong species.

And then they really started closing in on him.

His eyes got tired from going so wide. From keeping watch all the time for the flash of white or tan that might mean he was just around that cluster of hollowed trunks or that fall of rocks or the bend in that stream.

In truth, the prayers he spoke and thought and sent out in Purgatory were nothing to the prayers after.

Something about the way Purgatory suspended need had filtered out the *reasons* Dean needed Castiel, reduced them to a simple drive. After he parted ways with Benny, when he was back on his own, when he needed food and water and sleep and to feel things all over again.

That's when the prayers really came.

Because you can't just pray with your head. It's fine as a homing beacon, as a fucking messaging service if you have to use it that way.

But a prayer, real prayer, comes from a beating heart.

By all means, it started off the same:

_I'm in Missouri. If you can ride somebody out or get your ass out of Purgatory somehow._

_Somehow._

_Then you'll find me in Missouri._

_I found food today. A good burger joint. And a beer I liked. And._

And it just wasn't the same. It wasn't what it was in Purgatory. His head was empty of information, his heart was full of wanting.

_If you get out. I need you to get out. If you get out, you come home to me. If ever you get out, you come home to me. Cas, when you get out, you come home to me._

_Cas. When you get out. You come home to me._  
 _You come home any way you can. I will find you._  
 _You kill who you have to. You come home to me._

Behind his words, telling Sam that Cas had died, couldn't help thinking,  _you'll come home to me_.


End file.
